


O' Stars Above Me

by stanlonbrough



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: alright none of this might actually make sense and thats ok, hope yall enjoy, i came up with this in the shower listening to queen and rock lobster lol, this is also really rushed bc i really wanted to write it but im a bad writer so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 17:07:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stanlonbrough/pseuds/stanlonbrough
Summary: Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.





	O' Stars Above Me

**Author's Note:**

> Ok i'm nervous about posting this bc it's really rambely and might not make any sense and also my grammar still sucks. I have learned nothing. I mention the stars a lot bc I made that mike moodboard that I'm super proud of and then I adore that quote i used for the summary (from a poem called The Old Astronomer but im pretty sure everyone has seen this specific part of it lol) so this was born!!! hope you all actually like it haha

Mike Hanlon, according to himself, was a great appreciator of things. 

His momma always said he had a good eye. An eye for beauty and an eye for splendor. His momma was never wrong. He learned this very often. 

When he was younger, his father would take him (secretly; while Jessica was asleep) to the roof of the barn to look at the stars.

He was enamored from the start. The way they shined glowed back through his eyes. The way they were born from nothing but dust left over from the beginning. The way they died in bright grandeur. Their captivating glory and quiet magnificence. 

(He privately thought stars were a lot like him.)

He took to the library, looking for books about space and stars as if it were the only thing able to keep him breathing. He would come home with heaps, stacks of books in his arms. His natural curiosity and childlike need to know everything about the world taking over, resulting in him staying up much past his bedtime to absorb as much information as he could. He always felt like it was never enough. 

Mike would often have nightmares. 

Disgusting, horrible, terrifying monsters crept up from the shadows, enveloping his room in the pitch black. Mike, being very smart for his age and wise beyond his young years, thought there was a very discernible difference between terror and horror. 

Terror was ice, sending shivers up your spine and making your hair stand up on end. Terror was the deafening knowledge that something was following close behind you in the darkness, but not knowing what. 

Horror was understanding. Horror was knowing exactly what was behind you in that darkness. Horror was knowing nothing can be done about the inevitable. 

After he had discovered the stars, however, these monsters fled from his mind. Their beautiful blinding light became his saviors, his heroes for when he knew his parents were not able to protect him. He would turn his back to the rest of his room, exposing himself to the unknown, to look at the stars. They calmed him in a way almost nothing else could. Made him feel safe, protected, guarded. 

Mike met his first real, human friends at age thirteen. It was as sad as it seems, but he never realized this. He was delivering meats, as usual, when a kid with an ugly blond mullet and red shirt came stomping over to him. Three other boys followed behind him. The blond boy roughly grabbed him arm, almost bruising him, and dragged him across the deserted street over to the woods. These were the real monsters, he thought, and there are no stars to save me. 

He didn't know what to do. Whether to simply sag and let them do whatever they pleased? Or to fight back? He was frozen in the moment, forever contemplating the decision and by the time he had worked up the gumption to pull back, they had made it to a clearing. 

The blond boy pushed him onto the ground, almost making him hit his head. The kid then started growling horrible, awful things into his ears. Kept pushing him down until he felt like he was going to suffocate-

And then the stars came out. 

Six beautiful children, all around his own age, came into the clearing, eyes wild and full of fear. They were wonderful. 

They fought for him that day. Hurtling rocks and sticks and everything they could get their hands on at these monsters, who ran back into the darkness, gone for now. 

These children took care of him. Patched him up. They gave them their names, which he took to his mind to never forget: Beverly, Bill, Eddie, Richie, Ben, and finally, Stanley. His own shining stars. 

They kept him safe in their arms, in their holds, and after that summer (that dreadful summer) he turned to them for comfort when his thoughts and fears got the best of him. His parents were ecstatic about this development, demanding to meet these kids that brought their Mike to life. They had a wonderful dinner full of love, warmth, and comfort. It was his favorite memory. 

Until he made a new one. 

Stanley had always stood out to him. With his blond curls and wonderfully tanned skin, he was more like an actual star in appearance than any of this other friends. Mike was just as enamored with him as with the real stars in the skies. His freckles like constellations and imprints of their counterparts among the cosmos. Mike often got poetic when thinking about Stanley. 

They spent heaps of time together. Growing up together, making jokes together, spending nights with each other, they had a bond like none other. 

That is what made Mike so afraid of his feelings. He was so caught up in shame for feeling this type of love for his friend, that he never thought about the what if. 

What if he loved me back?

It was a calm, quiet day at the quarry. Spring was coming to end and summer to it beginning, the sun shining bright and hot, making Stan glow. Mike had to turn away, cheeks burning. 

Then, Stan spoke, 

“I wanted to bring you here so we could talk.”

And now Mike was truly terrified. Terrified that Stan had found out about his feelings and was going to ask Mike to leave him alone and to never speak to him again. Mike couldn’t stand the thought. 

So instead, he acted out. Just as Stan was opening his mouth to continue, Mike rushed forward, pressing his mouth firmly against Stan’s. 

Stan went still, dazed for a second from the suddenness of the kiss. Just when Mike was about to pull off and run away, Stan began to kiss back. It was awkward, it was actually kind of gross, but Mike would never let this moment leave his mind. His new favorite memory was when they got together that day. 

Two years later Stan moves away. 

All the other losers already had: Bev way back in ‘89 and soon the rest followed. Mike was never prepared for it, locking himself in his room and crying himself to sleep late at night. His stars were leaving. Leaving to go onto better things. Bittersweet supernovas. 

In the summers they spent together, basking in Stanley’s light, Mike felt he himself become a star. Felt himself glow in a way he never had before. He was so incredibly happy, that the monsters and nightmares went away. Ripped to shreds. Melted in the light. Gone. 

Mike was alone now. The others had Forgotten long before he had. Well, he never truly forgot, and any detail that he did manage to lose was violently brought back after glaring at notebooks full of memories. Good and bad. 

He began to turn to the skies again. His mother had passed away the summer going into the 11th grade and his father’s health began to fail soon after. He wasn’t prepared to be an adult, didn’t know how to be independent, wasn’t yet able to be functioning on his own. 

He reads to his father everyday, the newspaper, books for class, star charts. They couldn’t go onto the barn roof anymore so Mike fashioned their own astronomy tower, friendly for his father’s wheelchair. He took up the farm work as well. He became exhausted, working day and night and the times inbetween to continue what his parents had left for him: a sure way to survive. 

He pretends that he’s okay. It works. For a while. 

He checks up on them sometimes. Gives them calls just to hear their wondrous voices again. He wonders why he does this because this always seems to hurt him more than any cut or bruise. They don’t remember him. He calls despite knowing. 

The 27 years has almost passed, now, and Mike Hanlon is so tired. He has his nightmares on most nights, but he has forgotten his guardians. His beautiful, fiery protectors from the heavens above. His celestial defenders. 

Kids have started to go missing. 

He knows the time is running out. The darkness is oozing slowly on and forward, ready to take hold of Derry once more. Mike knows (hopes) they’ll be more prepared this time around. 

The night comes. He makes his first call. 

Stepping inside the designated restaurant brings a whole new anxiety to his body. What if they don’t click the way they used to? What if they aren’t enough this time. What if IT is stronger now?

He sees Richie Tozier and these thoughts leave him almost at once. 

They meet up at their table, each one coming from the darkness and glowing as they once did. They always did shine brighter in one another's company. A special kind of fuel. 

Stan is late. 

He sounded.. not right on the phone when Mike called, yes, but Stan was sure of everything he did and the blood oath was his very idea. But here they are, halfway through dinner and he still isn’t there. His phone lights up with a call, the vibrations running through the table. They quiet down and stare at his phone, knowing, somehow, who this call will be about. 

Mike’s hands shake as he picks up the phone and presses ‘accept’. 

He gets up and walks away from the table as a woman’s sobbing voice fills his head. He’s numb as he hears her scream and yell and cry at him. Blaming him. Through her tears he manages to ask her what this call is even about. He thinks he already knows. 

So she tells him. Tells him what he already knew. This time, there is no sweetness in a supernova. 

He stumbles back to the table, drops into his chair, buries his face in his hands and lets out a long shuddering breath. Beverly’s hand comes up to lay on his shoulder. 

“Stan is dead” he breathes out. Despite the quietness, they all hear him. They all felt the light go out, their vision becoming the tiniest bit dimmer. In the corner of his vision he sees Richie take his glasses off to wipe at his eyes. Ben squeezes his own eyes shut as he takes a long gulp of his drink. The conversation they make is not the same after that. 

Now, the time has come. They descend into the sewers, and it now makes sense that Hell is below ground, for it is where the Devil dwells. The real Devil. The Devil who can touch, hurt, steal, and destroy. The Devil who has already taken so much from them. 

Their plan quickly comes apart. It is hauntingly unfair how Bowers gets to come back but Stan does not. Henry Bowers who has long matted hair and no mercy in his eyes. Hell, there isn’t even a shred of humanity left in those eyes. He stabs Mike with no remorse, laughing as Mike drops, hands coming up to his stomach. 

As Mike lays on the floor, he sees Eddie and Richie burst through the door, Richie making his way straight to Mike and Eddie slings a chair over himself and slams it onto Bowers head and now Bowers drops. Mike laughs. Karma always comes through. 

He spends the fight in a hospital bed. His nurses and doctors are nice enough but they don’t offer him the comfort he needs. Night falls and he sleeps peacefully; he wakes knowing they were successful for it was his first night without a nightmare in 27 years. 

He also feels a little more hollow than before. He wonders what was lost this time. 

His friends come through the door of his room and does a head count. 

They talk him through it. Tell him how Bill’s wife showed up and is now in this very hospital being treated for brain damage; tell him how the ritual worked; how Eddie died a hero. 

Another star. Another friend. Gone. 

They all leave soon enough. After a few days, Ben and Beverly leave together. Bill takes himself and Audra back to England and Mike swears he saw Richie and Eddie hold hands when they walked out of the hotel lobby. 

Mike packs himself up from the hospital and goes homes. Derry is crumbling, he can feel it; just as tied to the town as IT itself. His skies are dark and dim; he has two holes in heart that nothing can fill again. 

However, this time, he remembers his stars. He feels jaded, in a way. More battle hardened. Perhaps that’s what happens when you have to deal with trauma that comes back to stab you in the gut at age 40. Maybe that's what happens when an eldritch abomination comes back to welcome you home. Perhaps this is what happens when you lose two of the loves of your life all in one go; when two stars explode in your face and it's all your fault. 

He no longer had nightmares. He has nothing left to haunt him. He feels bits of his childhood and bits of his memories fall away, leaving him feeling more free, more young than he possibly felt even at 12. He stays up late without fear and of his own volition. He has learned to love the skies he is under once again and he no longer tethers the stars in the sky to the ones in his heart and he feels free. So very free. 

Possibly like how a bird in flight might feel. 

He does remember the soft blond curls, the lovely green eyes; the boy drenched in gold, burning brighter than any real star. 

Now, Mike is up on the roof of his barn. He has his star charts and a thick, well-loved notebook as well as a pen. He telescope is aimed at the sky and he documents his sightings. The whole ordeal feels very familiar but he can’t seem to remember why. 

He no longer fears the night for the stars he has loved so fiercely and wholly protect him still. 

The monsters can’t reach him here. 

Mike Hanlon is finally at peace here in the dark, in the gentle winds that blow, the cool air around him, the owls he hears from within the forest. 

He can finally breathe in the dark surrounding him.

**Author's Note:**

> bother me at stanlonbrough on tumblr!!  
> italics never fucking work for me!! they worked once and never again. Love that.


End file.
